Friday, April 16, 2010

Presidential Material

I don’t know if I should Buenos Aires or Bonjour, or... this is such a melting pot. This is so beautiful. I love this diversity.

And take a big breath:

But this reminds me of heading out on stage on the VP trail when I was getting ready to debate Joe Biden. And there were like 40 some million viewers that I knew were out there waiting to see “is she going to crash? Is she going to be able to handle herself? How’s it going to go?” Whenever we go and do something big in life, like a vice presidential debate – it’s kind of big – I like to say a prayer about it, you know. I need some divine inspiration and I need to remember what it really is all about, so that evening before the debate I remember being back stage and looking around for somebody to pray with. And looking around at the campaign staff and there’s nobody to prayer with. But backstage there was Piper, at the time my seven year old. And I told Piper, I tried to make it easy for her to understand, I said “Piper, kay, I’m going out on stage. I’m debatin’ this guy, it’s going to be kind of tough.” I said, “So pray with me, honey.” And I grabbed her hands because that’s what we always do, we pray together. I said “Piper, just pray that I win.” Cause you know, why not?! Just pray that I do well, and oh man, try and keep it easy, I said “Just pray that God just speaks right through me.” And Piper said “God, speaking through you? That would be cheating.” Not that I would ever think that God would speak through me, but wanting to leave you with a little bit of inspiration and encouragement and maybe on a personal level have a conversation with you about some of the things that Todd and I have been through in the last year and a half, the last couple of years, that hopefully you can learn a couple of lessons from, because we’ve been through quite a few challenges, quite a few battles and you all too, everybody goes through battles, everybody has challenges.

And:

I want to talk real quick about purpose in life and it not being an accident that you are all here today together at this time, in this hour, there is a reason things just worked out for all of us to get to be here. And I’ll talk about that in this context. In about one year’s time span, what Todd and I have gone through. Sometimes when I have just a second to stop and think about things, maybe just one of these events is pretty earthquake equivalent of, it’s pretty earth shattering, just one of these events. You think, wow, there could be some lessons could be learned in this. First of all I was very, very busy.

And:

And again, as Plato said, I just want to remind you to be nice to one another, and remembering that everyone fighting the battle, some played out publicly, some are not, everyone though going through some tough times once in a while, so be merciful and forgiving and generous and then you will be blessed in return.

And:

We North Americans we come from the stock of our ancestors. My husband, he’s Alaskan native. He’s Eskimo. And then my Idaho roots. And I look out here and man, this melting pot and I recognize all our diverse backgrounds. And North America and our countries together, it’s playing a role in history of all of us, and we share the ideals of freedom and prosperity and sharing with others. It’s great places like Hamilton that make up the fabric of our nations. So knowing that there are many challenges in the years to come, through strength and perserverance, we’re going to continue to hold the global stage and our responsibility to stand up for what’s right.

So I asked him yesterday, well is this Tea Party kind of to your liking too, Todd, because you’re not used to this kind of Tea Party, you’re just used to the real kind! Todd is so cool because one of the tea parties he attended he had just come off the airplane and had tea at the White House with the first ladies including Mrs Bush. He had just gotten off the snowmobile race, he’s the four time world champion of snow-machine racing, the longest snow-machine race in the world, it’s 2,000 miles across Alaska. Very rugged. He had broken his arm with 400 miles to go in the race and had finished the race and then got it casted. So he ripped his cast off before the tea party with Mrs. Bush and it was just cracking me up thinking, man, if only people knew, the way that we really live. But he’s pretty amazing that he’s been able to multitask like that.

...so - how did he break his arm driving a snowmobile? (oh, sorry, I guess that's multitasking)

Okay, so maybe not P or VP ready, but she could be made the lead rep for some treaty talks, you know, when one side wants absolutely nothing to come out of the negotiations besides utter frustration on the other side.